Passion is still an illusion

by Parvez Sheik Fareed

A while back I said that passion is an illusion. I have an aversion to the use of the word “passion”. Passion has become the answer to everything. If you are bored at work, it’s because there’s a lack of passion. If your relationship isn’t working, it’s because there’s not enough passion. Your pet didn’t eat its food? Clearly passion. Your plant just died? Passion!

It has become highly fashionable to sell the necessity of passion. Passion adds a fancy touch or a higher meaning to anything in life. This absurdity has reached a peak that even trivial activities such as sending an email or waiting for the bus are about passion.

You will understand my excitement when I came across the opinion of two smart people who conclude that passion is total bullshit.

The first point of view comes from the famous Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. In his book How to fail at almost anything and still win big, Adams says, that passion is just an excuse to retain some humility when people are successful. To say you succeeded because you’re far smarter than the average person isn’t very humble. But you can say the reason of your success was passion, which sounds very accessible to most people. Adams says that it actually works the other way round: the more things work out, the more you are passionate about something. Success causes passion more than passion causes success. Passion is sometimes simply a by-product of knowing you will be good at something.

The other brilliant opinion is a guest post on The Ad Contrarian: Crimes of Passion by Marcie Judelson. Read it, it’s bloody good.